QUESTION: Please pick a section from Chapter 2: “Hood Politics” from Promise That You Will Sing A

Brittney Cooper

“Maybe I’ll Be a Poet, Rapper”: Hip-Hop Feminism

and Literary Aesthetics in Push

In�the�first�decade�of�the�twenty-first�century,�the�number�of�mainstream�blackfemale�rap�artists�decreased�drastically.�In�fact,�by�2005,�the�Grammy�Awards�had
eliminated�the�award�for�best�female�rap�artist,�due�to�the�paucity�of�nominees.1

Simultaneously,�hip-hop�literature,�known�alternately�as�“street�lit,”�“ghetto�lit,”
and�“lit�hop,”�written�by�black�women�and�marketed�to�young�women�and�girls�from
ages�thirteen�to�thirty,�exploded;�titles�like�Nikki�Turner’s�A Hustler’s Wife,�sell�yearly
in�the�hundreds�of�thousands�(Marshall,�Staples,�and�Gibson�28).�It�is�not�coinci-
dental�that�the�entrepreneurial�spirit�that�has�characterized�black�men’s�rise�to�fame
in�hip�hop�has�been�adopted�by�female�street�novelists,�many�of�whom�self-publish
their�gritty�urban�tales.�The�rapid�explosion�of�black�female�street-lit�authors�is�a
cultural�and�literary�phenomenon�that�demands�the�attention�of�scholars�who�are
interested�in�the�ways�that�black�women�use�literature�to�articulate�black�female
subjectivity.�It�stands�to�reason,�then,�that�if�we�want�to�locate�narratives�of�women’s
lives�in�the�hip-hop�generation,�we�must�turn�to�hip�hop’s�literature.

Sapphire’s�1996�novel�Push draws�on�the�“gritty�urban�street�chronicles”�of�hip-
hop�aesthetics�to�tell�the�story�of�Claireece�“Precious”�Jones,�a�teenager�coming�of
age�in�what�William�Jelani�Cobb�refers�to�as�the�golden�era�of�hip�hop,�1984�to�1992.2

This�text�predates�the�rise�of�hip-hop�or�street�literature�by�several�years.3 Sapphire’s
effort�to�tie�Push,�through�implicit�and�explicit�textual�allusions,�to�the�work�of�Toni
Morrison,�Alice�Walker,�Audre�Lorde,�and�Pat�Parker�connects�these�seemingly
divergent�“high�vs.�low�art”�approaches�to�black�women’s�storytelling.�Critics�have
tended�to�ascribe�literary�value�to�texts�based�on�their�proximity�to�the�aesthetic
qualities�of�works�by�more�canonical�authors,�such�as�Zora�Neale�Hurston,�Toni
Morrison,�Alice�Walker,�and�Gayl�Jones.�Because�these�novelists�have�all�drawn�heavily
on�blues�and�jazz�aesthetics�in�constructing�their�novels,�literary�critics�identified
the�blues�and�jazz�as�a�significant�unifying�characteristic�of�the�African�American
women’s�literary�tradition.4 This�has�tended�to�mean�that�African�American�literary
texts,�particularly�those�of�black�women,�must�be�beholden�to�the�literary�nexus�of
jazz�and�the�blues�if�they�want�to�be�considered�“serious”�literature.

Push acts�as�a�bridge�text�between�earlier�generations�of�black�women’s�writing
and�the�urban�street�dramas�that�predominate�today.�Sapphire’s�invocation�of�hip�hop
is�an�early�portrait�of�a�hip-hop�aesthetic�in�prose�form�that�offers�relevance�while
avoiding�the�pitfalls�of�presentism.�Further,�the�novel�offers�a�critical�model�for
the�ways�in�which�hip-hop�texts�(might)�engage�with�their�literary�forebears.�Push
demonstrates�the�need�for�literary�works�to�grapple�with�the�politics,�poetics,�and
aesthetics�of�hip�hop,�while�remaining�connected�with�these�prior�works.�Moreover,
Push calls�into�existence�a�new�generation�of�black�women’s�stories,�stories�that
consider�age-old�of�questions�of�family,�motherhood,�friendship,�sex,�and�love,�but
in�the�context�of�hip-hop�culture,�the�AIDS�epidemic,�the�conservative�backlash�of
the�1980s,�and�the�deindustrialized�city�confronting�urban�blight.

Thus,�two�questions�inform�my�examination�of�the�use�of�hip-hop�aesthetics�in
Sapphire’s�1996�novel�Push.�First,�given�the�centrality�of�blues�and�jazz�music�to�the
African�American�literary�tradition,�how�does�contemporary�African�American�liter-
ature—and�in�particular,�work�by�African�American�women—encounter�and�engage

55
African American Review 46.1 (Spring 2013): 55-69
© 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press and Saint Louis University

Cooper_Cooper 5/23/2014 6:34 PM Page 55

hip-hop�culture�and�its�aesthetic�contours?�Second,�how�are�hip-hop�aesthetics,
which�are�generally�characterized�as�issuing�from�and�being�informed�by�black�male
experiences,�informed�and�shaped�by�the�stories�of�African�American�women?
Sapphire�offers�preliminary�thoughts�on�how�we�might�answer�these�questions�in�an
interview�with�literary�critic�Wendy�Rountree,�who�attempts�to�read�Push as�a�blues
novel.�Whereas�Rountree�argues�that�“Sapphire�creates�a�young�blues�woman,
Precious,�who�conquers�physical�and�emotional�abuse,�reclaims�her�voice,�and�tells
her�story�by�masterfully�weaving�her�painful�experiences�into�blues�expression”�(133),
Sapphire�characterizes�the�text�as�a�“blues/hip�hop/jazz�novel.”�She�notes�that�in
addition�to�the�themes�of�acceptance,�submission,�and�transcendence�that�issue
from�the�blues,�“it�is�in�hip�hop,�the�music�of�Precious’�generation,�that�we�find�the
open�defiance,�visibility�of�the�formally�invisible�(ghetto�youth),�and�the�movement
from�the�periphery�of�the�culture�to�it’s�[sic]�center”�(Sapphire�qtd.�in�Rountree�133).
Although�Rountree�acknowledges�the�hybrid�nature�of�the�novel,�hip�hop�retains
import�only�parenthetically�in�her�reading.�However,�Push actively�resists�a�singular
reading�through�the�blues�tradition,�because�the�social�concerns�of�the�hip-hop
generation�primarily�inform�the�protagonist’s�negotiation�of�age-old�questions
about�motherhood,�sexuality,�family,�and�racism.

Instead,�Push foregrounds�and�is�informed�by�a�hip-hop�aesthetic.�This�aesthetic
issues�from�a�generational�confrontation�with�economic�lack,�privation,�and�the
realities�of�civil�rights-era�and�Black�Power-era�dreams�deferred,�and�takes�three
primary�forms.�First,�it�uses�a�kind�of�social�alchemy�that�transforms�lack�into
substance.�Lacking�access�to�formal�musical�training�in�increasingly�underfunded
public�schools,�urban�youth�made�their�own�minimalist�instruments.�In�the�beginning,
hip-hop�musicians�had�three�basic�instruments:�two�turntables,�a�microphone,�and
a�person�who�could�beatbox,�a�technique�in�which�a�person�blew�air�rhythmically
through�his�or�her�mouth�to�create�percussion.�By�the�early�1990s,�rapper�Tupac
Shakur�had�cemented�this�pervasive�social�alchemy�by�famously�lamenting�the�expe-
rience�of�“trying�to�make�a�dollar�out�of�fifteen�cents.”�Second,�hip-hop�music�and
cultural�expression�privilege�a�well-honed�facility�for�defiance;�in�fact,�hip-hop
expression�could�be�said�to�issue�from�a�set�of�cultural�experiences�that�pivot�upon
a�dialectic�of�deviance�and�defiance.�By�deviance,�I�refer�to�the�ways�that�larger�cul-
tural�narratives�and�structures�of�power�sought�to�demonize�and�pathologize�black
and�brown�communities�from�without.�The�cultural�response�to�these�conditions
among�hip-hop�youth�was�not�uplift�or�respectability�politics,�nonviolent�direct�action,
or�armed�political�resistance,�but�open�cultural�defiance.�The�goal�of�such�open
defiance�was�to�demand�visibility,�recognition,�and�voice,�if�not�access�to�better�social
conditions.�Finally,�hip-hop�aesthetics�privilege�street�consciousness�and�cultural�
literacy.�Hip-hop�music�and�texts�celebrate�protagonists�who�know�how�to�survive
in�the�mean�streets�of�the�city,�and�these�texts�issue�tests�of�one’s�cultural�and�street
knowledge,�by�references�to�history,�current�affairs,�geographical�location,�popular
culture,�old�music,�new�music,�and�current�slang.�Thus,�hip-hop�texts�provide�a
smorgasbord�of�cultural�references,�and�the�reader’s�or�listener’s�degree�of�knowledge
determines�the�extent�to�which�he�or�she�can�make�meaning�out�of�the�text�and/or
navigate�the�neighborhood.

Those Are the Breaks: Hip-hop Aesthetics and Literary Technique

Precious�begins�her�story�with�a�shocking�confession:�“I�was�left�back�whenI�was�twelve�because�I�had�a�baby�for�my�fahver,”�(3).�Her�precarious�social
situation�makes�her�unsure�if�her�story�is�“even�a�story,”�but�she�presses�on,�testifying
that�she�is�“gonna�try�to�make�sense�and�tell�the�truth,�else�what’s�the�fucking�use?”

56 AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW

Cooper_Cooper 5/23/2014 6:34 PM Page 56

Precious’s�confrontational�style�reflects�the�street�lit�that�emerged�after�Push,�in
which�“authors�tell�their�stories�boldly,�without�nuance,�and�with�pride�over�and
over�again.�It’s�as�if�street-lit�authors�are�saying,�as�rappers�did�in�the�beginning�of
hip�hop,�‘We�are�here.�This�is�how�it�is.�Make�of�us�what�you�will’�”�(Smith�192).

It�is�September�24,�1987.�Precious�has�just�walked�into�“I.S.�146�on�134th Street
between�Lenox�Avenue�and�Adam�Clayton�Powell,�Jr.�Blvd”�in�Harlem�(4).�This
vivid�description�of�her�exact�location�is�part�of�a�hip-hop�ethos�where�physical
location,�a�marker�of�social�location,�is�everything.�Two�anchor�points�situate�the
narrative�of�hip-hop�progress:�“where�ya�from”�and�“where�ya�at.”�School�is�a
space�of�contention�for�Precious.�She�is�continually�in�conflict�with�her�teachers.
After�one�particularly�heated�exchange�with�her�teacher,�she�refuses�to�leave�class,
telling�him,�“I�ain’�going�nowhere�motherfucker�till�the�bell�ring.�I�came�to�learn
maff�and�you�gon’�teach�me.”�In�a�self-reflexive�moment,�Precious�intimates,�“’N�I
really�do�want�to�learn.�Everyday�I�tell�myself�something�gonna�happen,�some�shit
like�on�TV.�I’m�gonna�break�through�or�somebody�gonna�break�through�to�me—
I’m�gonna�learn,�catch�up,�be�normal”�(5).�She�even�gets�mad�when�other�students
become�disruptive,�noting�that�when�“the�other�natives�get�restless�I�break�on�’em”
(5).�It�is�significant�that�Precious�thinks�of�her�classmates�as�natives,�which�auto-
matically�denotes�the�school�as�a�colonized�space.�Pregnant�with�her�second�child,
on�the�verge�of�being�seventeen,�and�in�eighth�grade,�she�gets�expelled�from�school
for�being�pregnant�and�for�having�“an�attitude�of�total�uncooperation”�(8).�Precious
definitely�needs�a�break,�though�she�cannot�seem�to�catch�one.

The�repetition�of�the�word�break is�useful�for�thinking�about�the�aesthetic�con-
tours�of�breaking�within�a�hip-hop�context,�in�which�“the�breaks”�refer�to�bad�luck
or�unfortunate�circumstances�as�they�do�in�the�classic�song�by�rapper�Kurtis�Blow.5

Precious�not�only�needs�a�break,�but�she�is�also�willing�to�“break�bad”�or�get�violent
with�her�classmates.�However,�more�so�than�all�of�this,�she�proclaims�her�own�need
for�a�break-through.�Instead,�the�school�expels�her.�Luckily,�her�school�principal�Mrs.
Lichtenstein,�referred�to�as�“the�white�bitch,”�takes�enough�of�an�interest�in�Precious
to�suggest�that�she�consider�enrolling�in�an�alternative�school.�Her�mother�is�livid.
“Go�down�to�welfare,�school�can’t�help�you�none,�now”�(22).�Now�that�she�is�pregnant
with�her�second�child�by�her�father,�that�is.�Precious’s�home�life�is�its�own�site�of
brokenness.

Reflecting�on�her�mother’s�refusal�to�acknowledge�her�father’s�abuse,�Precious
concludes�that�“that�stinky�hoe�give�me�to�him�[because]�Probably�thas�what�he
require�to�fuck�her,�some�of�me.”�Precious�then�has�a�flashback�to�one�of�their�many
encounters:�“He�climb�on�me.�.�.�.�I�fall�back�on�bed,�he�fall�right�on�top�of�me.”
In�the�midst�of�such�horrendous�abuse,�Precious�“change[s]�stations,�change[s]�bodies”
(24).�“I�be�dancing�in�videos!”�she�tells�us.�“In�movies!�I�be�breaking,�fly,�jus’�a�dancing.
Umm�hmm�heating�up�the�stage�at�the�Apollo�for�Doug�E.�Fresh�or�Al�B.�Sure!
They�love�me!�Say�I’m�one�of�the�best�dancers”�(24).

In�this�understandable�“break”�from,�or�suspension�of�reality,�Precious�not�only
changes�her�metaphoric�radio�or�television�station�but�also�changes�bodies,�shifting
corporeally�and�temporally.�The�change�in�station�signals�a�shift�from�a�set�of�cultural
resources�that�no�longer�works.�She�changes�to�a�station�that�she�can�understand,
in�which�she�can�be�a�version�of�herself�that�she�desires.�Tellingly,�she�changes�to�a
hip-hop�station.�On�that�station,�the�music�she�hears�conjures�visions�of�being�a
video�girl�and�a�breakdancer�for�the�likes�of�hip-hop�pioneer�Doug�E.�Fresh.�She�is
not�“flying�away”�but�rather�“breaking�fly,”�or�dancing�with�skill,�flair,�and�alacrity.
Though�Precious�is�the�victim�of�many�bad�breaks,�and�though�she�deals�with�those
traumas�by�taking�intermittent�breaks�from�reality,�her�fantasies,�configured�in�the
nexus�between�breaking�away�from�reality�and�breaking�fly�on�a�hip-hop�stage,
invite�us�to�see�these�“breaks”�and�the�brokenness�of�her�life�as�spaces�that�allow
for�joy�and�creativity�along�with�critique�and�lament.

“MAybE I’LL bE A PoEt, RAPPER”: HIP-HoP FEMINISM ANd LItERARy AEStHEtICS IN PUSH 57

Cooper_Cooper 5/23/2014 6:34 PM Page 57

Kurtis�Blow�deploys�“the�breaks”�as�a�metaphoric�double�entendre�that�signifies
the�precarious�social�circumstances�that�characterize�the�lives�of�urban�youth�in�the
1980s,�and�the�aesthetic�generativity�and expectations�of�the�musical�break.�For
instance,�when�the�chorus�moves�from�explicating�what�exactly�“are�the�breaks”�to
proclaiming�“break�it�up”�three�times�and�then�telling�the�audience�to�“break�down,”
there�is�an�extension�and�repetition�of�this�part�of�the�beat,�which�acts�as�an�invita-
tion�for�listeners�to�really�start�dancing.�Blow’s�multivalent�use�of�“the�break(s)”
reveals�it�to�be�a�germinal�cultural�metaphor�for�discussing�hip-hop�literary�aesthetics.
Alonzo�Westbrook�defines�the�break�as�“the�part�in�an�old�school�song�where�the
singer�would�pause�for�an�instrumental�part.�During�the�break,�deejays�would�rap�and
b-boys�would�break�dance”�(Westbrook�18).�The�“instrumental�part”�is�known�as
the�breakbeat.�Breakbeats�could�also�be�parts�of�a�song�that�a�deejay�finds�especially
compelling,�at�which�point�he�or�she�manipulates�the�turntable�to�cause�that�part�of
the�record�to�repeat,�much�like�a�broken�record,�but�with�more�intentionality�and
flair.�The�break�is�not�only�critical�in�the�immediate�moment�of�a�hip-hop�event,
defining�as�it�does�a�deejay’s�skill�for�getting�the�party�started�and�keeping�it�going,
but�is�also�literally�one�of�the�most�important�germinal�moments�for�developing�and
showcasing�hip-hop�artistry.�The�engagement�of�hip-hop�artists�with�the�breakbeat
centrally�influenced�the�development�of�breakdancing�and�rapping.�That�moment
celebrates�the�creative�use�of�voices�and�bodies�in�a�joyful�engagement�with�the
corporeal.

…

Chapter 2

Hood Politics

1.
Kendrick Lamar is in chains, shackled and shuffling. A four-man chain
gang shuffles directly behind him, dressed in drab blue prisoner uniforms.
Only blue jeans set Kendrick’s uniform apart as he shambles his way to a
microphone stand, center stage at the Staples Center arena in downtown
Los Angeles. He lifts his chained wrists over the microphone mount,
sweating, concentrated. Most of the audience at the fifty-eighth annual
Grammy Awards waited all night for this moment. Kendrick leads the
night’s nominations, one nomination shy of the most (twelve) any artist
has ever received in one year: the late king of pop Michael Jackson, in
1984. All eyes on him. Then he opens his mouth and lets loose.

“I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015,” he says, invoking his most
controversial line that year. Terrace Martin cries through a saxophone to
Kendrick’s left, imprisoned onstage in cell block 29. He repeats the line,
which slowly, dramatically unfolds into “The Blacker the Berry,” the
second single from his celebrated major label sophomore album, To Pimp
a Butterfly. Trump hasn’t yet been elected; still Kendrick seems to speak
directly to the basest of his constituency among the nearly twenty-five
million people glued to their televisions, tablets, and smartphones. He’s
under no illusions about the fake niceties of micro-aggressive racists and
he lets it be known. He runs down all the hated features of his hair, his
nose, his penis. He’s aware of white supremacist plans for his community,
their hatred for his culture. On the world’s biggest stage for celebrating
music, Kendrick indicts everyone with ill intentions toward his people in
prime time, unapologetically.

The song ultimately trades The song ultimately trades in the same
theme of racialized self-hatred as Harlem Renais The song ultimately
trades in the same theme of racialized self-hatred as Harlem Renaissance
author Wallace Thurman’s 1929 novel, The Blacker the Berry. Where
Thurman’s book grapples with intracultural colorism, Kendrick charges
whites revulsed by African Americans with hating the men in the mirror:
“I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself.” But Kendrick
doesn’t make it to that verse onstage. Those who know the song know the
indictment.

Instead, he stumbles off (unchained now) to another Grammy set—a
blazing bonfire flanked by tribal dancers and drummers—and another
song. As Kendrick relocates himself from the penitentiary to a place
evocative of the Motherland, the music shifts to a single that wins both
Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song before the night is through. But
Grammy-winning singles are far more common than anthems. Kendrick’s
millions of viewers that night necessarily include activists who spent their
2015 protesting against the wrongful deaths of Sandra Bland, Freddie
Gray, and other victims of police brutality. The Black Lives Matter
movement was new to the world, and “Alright” became as much a rallying
cry for them at nationwide demonstrations as “We Shall Overcome” in the
1960s was for freedom fighters of the civil rights movement. Liberating
himself to a free space in the mise en scène of the Staples Center stage,
Kendrick appropriately launched into his widely adopted mantra of hope
and perseverance.

The crowd of twenty-0ne thousand peers, celebs, and record industry
insiders, all summarily impressed, rest in the palm of his hand. With the
same affected limping gait, he shuffles away from his eight backing
dancers to one last microphone stand. This song no one knows. Parts of
this “untitled 05” version appear three weeks later on untitled unmastered,
a new album of studio outtakes, with a subtitle suggesting he first created
the track on September 21, 2014. “On February twenty-sixth, I lost my life
too,” he mentions early, jumping off from the death date of Trayvon
Martin to unpack a song devoted to institutional racism as modern-day
slavery. Again, no one yet knows “untitled 05.” And so the audience, now

much more hushed, pays especially close attention. He suggests meeting
violence with violence. He makes organized religion sound ineffectual and
impotent, embodying a character who finds more solace in a firearm and
the bottom of a bottle. He wraps up the song with three mentions of
HiiiPower, his self-created fledgling movement meant to encourage honor
and respect in black communities.

The beat drops out and a new backdrop illuminates the stage: a
continental outline of Africa, with COMPTON written dead center in
Gothic lettering. Everyone leaps to their feet in a standing ovation,
cameras capturing seasoned MCs like Common and Run of Run-DMC
applauding. Grammy host and veteran rapper LL Cool J, visibly
impressed, cuts to a commercial.

In the space of six minutes, Kendrick Lamar invoked the prison
industrial complex, black activism, Pan-Africanism, systemic racism, and
the legacy of socially conscious hiphop. By contrast, rap trio Three 6
Mafia used their moment before an even larger audience at the 2006
Academy Awards to perform “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” yet signified
nothing outside the literal confines of the song. The comparison is perhaps
unfair. But Kendrick’s performance is a prime example of why he wears
the mantle of Tupac Shakur, why he’s widely considered the most political
rapper in the modern-day pop culture cosmos.

Just as Kendrick can be said to exist in a post-gangster rap era, he also
came to power in a hiphop era of post-political consciousness. He was in
diapers when Public Enemy considered themselves the Black Panthers of
rap, and KRS-One shot an album cover inspired by the legendary photo of
Malcolm X guarding his window with an assault rifle. In the late 1980s,
Rakim had only just raised lyricism in rap to new levels of complexity
before P.E. politicized hiphop with their classic, paradigm-shifting It Takes
a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Full of references to black
liberation icons like Louis Farrakhan, Assata Shakur, and Malcolm X over
samples1 collaged with a Romare Bearden–level attention to detail, the
album kick-started a Black Power renaissance in the culture. Kendrick
missed that wave of cultural nationalist rap that included P.E., KRS-One,

X Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Brand Nubian. But its legacy
impacted his idol.

Tupac Shakur, raised by members of the Black Panther Party, brought
their ideology to bear on record and in life. Fusing black consciousness
with the gangster trope popularized by the likes of Ice Cube, Tupac
embodied the enlightened outlaw. He shot at wayward police. He invented
a nebulous Thug Life ethos to rally his listeners against white supremacy,
the direct inspiration behind Kendrick’s HiiiPower philosophy. He rhymed
about police brutality, poverty, racism, female empowerment, drug
addiction, and mass incarceration. And most importantly, to paraphrase
Kendrick Lamar, he charismatically made it look sexy. Hiphop has been
political as a culture since the heyday of one of its founders, Afrika
Bambaataa. His Universal Zulu Nation organization helped squelch gang
violence in the South Bronx back in the early ’70s. Tupac wasn’t going to
be rap’s last militant; the culture’s activist roots run too deep.

Kendrick also grew up under the social justice of rap duo dead prez,
the positivist rhymes of Common, the consciousness of Lauryn Hill, Talib
Kweli, and Mos Def. But save for Lauryn, none of those MCs ever turned
their political savvy into the type of commercial success Kendrick

currently enjoys. His politics aren’t perfect. His political education has
been public, awkward, and thrust upon him to a large degree. But making
the effort matters to him. What’s most important to bear in mind is that
he’s a child of lower-income Compton, California, whose main focus
starting from puberty has been to climb hiphop’s highest heights, to fight
his way out of poverty to stand beside his childhood rap heroes as a peer.
Kendrick’s varied viewpoints in the years since he’s been elevated into a
generational voice reflect the mercurial fluctuations of a heated debate in
a black barbershop.

Dissecting Kendrick’s performance at the 2016 Grammy Awards properly
means presuming that he chose “The Blacker the Berry,” “Alright,” and
“untitled 05” as songs that represented where he stood as an artist at that
point in his career and delving deeper into why. Opening with “The
Blacker the Berry,” Kendrick presented himself onstage shackled to a
chain gang, restrained with handcuffs. His band stood behind bars. Later
that same year, director Ava DuVernay released the Netflix documentary
13th, about the intersection of race, justice, and the prison system.
Through his lyrics (“you made me a killer”) and his appearance as a
prisoner, he uses the Grammy plat-form to cause viewers to consider the
institutional roots behind American imprisonment patterns. He’d long
since recorded “Uncle Bobby & Jason Keaton” on The Kendrick Lamar
EP, telling the stories of an uncle and a close friend from Compton who
were both serving time. Bringing attention to the prison industrial
complex isn’t an agitprop pose for Kendrick; the issue hits way too close
to home.

Seven months earlier in Cleveland, Ohio, a coalition of black
community activist groups across the nation called the Movement for
Black Lives convened their first official conference at Cleveland State
University. The city became a flash point in November 2014 when police
officers shot and killed a twelve-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, for playing in a
playground with a toy pistol. The conference concluded without incident
until its final day, when police stopped a fourteen-year-old for boarding a

bus back to his hometown with an open container of alcohol. Soon officers
were pepper-spraying the crowd, which had right away advocated for the
rights of the teenage boy. An activist phoned the boy’s mother, and she
shortly rescued him from police custody. It was an exhilarating moment,
like the dramatization in director Spike Lee’s Malcolm X when the Nation
of Islam refuse to vacate the streets outside a police station until they
assure the safety of an arrested black Muslim. The thwarted police
harassment prompted over two hundred protestors to spontaneously erupt
in song: “We gon’ be alright! We gon’ be alright!” The whole scene recalls
another Spike Lee production, the music video for Public Enemy’s “Fight
the Power,” where a political youth rally in Brooklyn transmogrifies into a
block party. Black Lives Matter had found its anthem, common knowledge
by the time Kendrick Lamar chose to perform “Alright” at the Grammy
Awards.

“I understand Kendrick to be an artist who both creates things that push us forward and also
things that should give us pause, in terms of the way he understands. There’s a lot of textures,
from the sexism inherent in a lot of his work to the misogynoir to almost a more poetic, Bill
Cosbyesque pointing the finger back at black people. And that ain’t cool. At the same time, I think
it’s precisely because of what his music has allowed, what he has provided as an artist, that many
people haven’t disposed of him. I don’t think enough of us held him to account. By ‘us,’ I’m
speaking here of the progressive, black, left, movement community that rallied around ‘Alright’—
which might’ve also been our opportunity at that time and after to hold him to account for some
of the shit that he spewed in his lyrics.”
—DARNELL L. MOORE

Africa loomed as the final image of Kendrick’s set that night, a
superimposed COMPTON in the heart of the continent. Superhero movie
fanboys already knew that Marvel Studios slated Black Panther for 2018
but couldn’t have predicted its future as the highest grossing film of that
year, much less that director Ryan Coogler would invite Kendrick to
curate its Grammy-nominated soundtrack. Black Panther: The Album
features Babes Wodumo, queen of the African electronic dance music
subgenre known as gqom. Johannesburg rapper Yugen Blakrok and his
Jo’burg brother Sjava rhymed alongside Kendrick on the album as well,
the sound of Afrofuturist hiphop from Black Panther’s fictional African
nation of Wakanda made real. All that came later. When Kendrick

connected his ancestral homeland with his childhood neighborhood, the
motivation likely came straight from the same inspiration behind To Pimp
a Butterfly: his 2014 trip to South Africa.

The good kid, m.A.A.d city world tour took Kendrick and his Top
Dawg Entertain-ment labelmates Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q, and Ab-Soul
through sixty shows in fifteen different countries. On February 7, 8, and 9,
the TDE team played Durban, Johann-esburg, and Cape Town night after
night. They tapped local South African MCs like Khuli Chana and Reason
to open the sold-out dates on Kendrick’s first trip to the continent. He
stayed for a full week, visiting Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Is-land.
Inspiration from the trip poured into later songs on To Pimp a Butterfly
like “Momma” (symbolic of the Motherland) and “Mortal Man” (which
name-checks Mandela on its hook: “The ghost of Mandela, hope my flow
stay propellin’”). Rap fanatics in the politically conscious era of the late
’80s replaced gold rope chains for leather medallions inscribed with the
African continent swinging around their necks. Kendrick missed out on
that, but still found his own way to the idea of diasporic solidarity between
Africans and blacks in America.

Connecting those dots may seem like a minor gesture, but what’s
ultimately in question here is the attention of his younger hiphop fans,
who might suddenly take Pan-Africanism into consideration for the first
time because Kendrick said so. Black Panther didn’t coin the famous
phrase “with great power comes great responsibility”; that was Spider-
Man. But it’s a maxim Kendrick takes seriously to heart. To Pimp a
Butterfly comments several times on the conflict of misusing influence,
the resentment over abusing power. As an avid Christian who’s infused
religious references into his music for years, Kendrick has never gone on
record about how often he flips through the Bible. Still, the late Stan Lee
(cocreator of Spider-Man, Black Panther and so many other Marvel
characters) likely cribbed the idea behind that signature saying from the
book of Luke: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be
demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much
more will be asked.” Whether Kendrick has read the verse or not, he

arguably lives by it. Planting seeds in the minds of impressionable viewers
at the 2016 Grammy Awards is only one example.

2.
Kendrick opened his Grammy performance with “I’m the biggest
hypocrite of 2015,” a line that kicks off every verse of “The Blacker the
Berry.” The song, inspired from the start by the murder of Florida teenager
Trayvon Martin, reveals its payoff in the final line: “So why did I weep
when Trayvon Martin was in the street/When gangbanging make me kill a
nigga blacker than me? Hypocrite!”

Controversy sparked immediately.
In a society riddled with so many police-driven atrocities against

African Americans, the nightly news tends to distinguish these incidents
with the most sound-bite-worthy details possible. Along these lines, the
nation remembers Trayvon Martin by his Skittles and AriZona watermelon
fruit juice, as opposed to the toy gun of Tamir Rice, or the Oakland train
stop Fruitvale Station, where an officer killed Oscar Grant, or chokehold
victim Eric Garner’s dying words, “I can’t breathe.” On February 26, 2012,
seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, visiting his father’s fiancée in a gated
community in Sanford, Florida, returned from a local convenience store
when George Zimmerman—an older resident with an extensive history of
alarmist 911 calls—started chasing him. The self-styled neighborhood
watchman had already phoned the police, calling Trayvon “a real
suspicious guy … up to no good or he is on drugs or something.” The two
fought, and Zimmerman shot the teenager dead. Trayvon Martin’s murder
and George Zimmerman’s acquittal months later served as the inciting
incident behind the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and the internationally
recognized social movement to follow. Even nine years later, hoodies like
the sweatshirt Trayvon had on that night are worn nationwide every
February 26 by those who stand in protest against his senseless murder.

What Kendrick appeared to say in no uncertain terms is that the
narrator of “The Blacker the Berry” is hypocritical for mourning the

murder of Trayvon Martin when as an African American, he’s committed
murder against his own brother in the past. Essentially, the black-on-black
crime of gang violence Kendrick raises causes him to think twice about his
grief over Zimmerman’s killing. Of all the issues he could have raised
related to Trayvon Martin—the stand-your-ground law, inequalities in the
criminal justice system—he instead suggests that black Americans
consider their own culpability. His misstep was not well received.

Without meaning to, Kendrick played right into the hands of a right-
wing mindset which believes that critiques against the larger (white)
power structure can-not hold muster until blacks address intracultural ills
within their own community. His thought process on “The Blacker the
Berry” resembles the whole Don Imus con-troversy of 2007. Facing
criticism of his racist on-air comment (“that’s some nappy-headed hoes
there … jigaboos”) directed against the Rutgers University women’s
basketball team, radio talk show host Don Imus immediately deflected,
claiming that worse language about black women flies around in hiphop
lyrics all the time. MSNBC took him off the air for two weeks, but his
non-apology set media think pieces in motion about the negativity African
Americans critique from outside their community versus what they allow
within it. Kendrick must have known his baiting coda was contentious
when he wrote it. A conversation starter maybe, a jump-start for
discussions about black self-annihilation. He didn’t seem to realize how
conserv-ative and naïve his idea appeared. Defending his view months
after releasing “The Blacker the Berry,” Kendrick told MTV:

So he was speaking for himself to himself then. His response to the
internet storm around his politics seemed genuine, not TDE spin to
manage a misguided idea. Kendrick Lamar, at twenty-seven, was not some
liberal arts pundit with a doctorate in political science. No one disputes his
irrefutable brilliance as an MC. But politically, he was coming into a very
public learning curve like a Nascar driver flying down the Daytona
speedway. A month before he sent heads spinning with “The Blacker the
Berry,” he conducted an equally problematic interview qualifying the
murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

“I don’t agree with Kendrick’s sentiments around hypocrisy. I don’t think we can understand
intra-communal violence without understanding the context that it sits in. At the same time, there
aren’t good answers for why black people do bad things to black people. We shouldn’t deny the
existence of black people causing other black people harm because it interrupts clean-cut
narratives around racial segregation and structural racism. I don’t wanna do that either. But I
think it is not hypocritical to be upset about the murder of Trayvon Martin by a wannabe
vigilante who was self-appointed as a neighborhood watchperson to basically keep black people
out of that community, even though he himself is not white.”
—ALICIA GARZA

The sound-bite-worthy nightly news detail attached to Michael
Brown’s murder, for those who may have forgotten him in the large
inventory of cops murdering black men in America, is “hands up, don’t
shoot.” On August 9, 2014, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown and a friend
walked the streets of Ferguson after pocketing some Swisher Sweets cigars
at a local convenience store. Officer Darren Wilson, a cop in an SUV,
stopped the two. Brown may or may not have reached inside for the
officer’s gun; testimony is inconsistent. Whatever the altercation may
have been, Brown ran, then turned back and started approaching the
officer, very possibly with his hands raised. Officer Wilson shot
defenseless Michael Brown dead, and the entire incident set off two weeks
and two days of unrest—police militarization, riots, and protesting—that
black activists remember as the Ferguson uprising. Come November, a
grand jury did not indict Darren Wilson. Around the country, the fresh

Black Lives Matter movement used “hands up, don’t shoot” as a rallying
cry, posing with arms raised like Michael Brown did the moment he was
killed.

Talking to a Billboard writer in a California recording studio two
months later, Kendrick offered this:

I wish somebody would look in our neighborhood knowing that
it’s already a situation, mentally, where it’s fucked up. What happened

to [Michael Brown] should’ve never happened. Never. But when we
don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us?

It starts from within. Don’t start with just a rally, don’t start from
looting. It starts from within.

The shadow of respectability politics eclipsed Kendrick’s reputation
as a critic of white supremacy the day his Billboard interview appeared
online, albeit briefly. Maybe we didn’t know him the way we thought,
some said. Others wondered if the success of good kid, m.A.A.d city had
changed his hood politics. The self-critique of his own black community
sounded too much like the tired old idea that African Americans have to

bring their cultural values into harmony with America’s superior mores in
order to earn equal respect from the likes of the Ferguson police
department. As if blacks don’t already respect themselves. As if the mores
of white America haven’t been suspect, from as far back as the genocide
of indigenous Americans to the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
Rapper Azealia Banks spoke for black Twitter and many others in toto that
afternoon, tweeting that Kendrick’s comments were the “dumbest shit I’ve
ever heard a black man say,” raising the generational effects of racism,
poverty, and discrimination against people of color in this country before
telling him, “speak for your fucking self.”

“I think Kendrick is exactly the type of person that I think needs to be organized into a movement
for social justice. Because currently, where his politics stand don’t actually lead us there. But he
is such an important voice that I would say that he should be target number one for an
organizing campaign.”
—ALICIA GARZA

“It seems right to me that Kendrick is a person who will grow over time in terms of his political
beliefs. Here is a person that at one point might say, ‘Fuck the White House, I’m screwing the
system,’ and then find it to be an honor to attend and be in the White House to push for the My
Brother’s Keeper initiative. That’s par for the course.”
—DARNELL L. MOORE

Kendrick’s self-defense came short and sweet months later, after the
February release of “The Blacker the Berry” (with its attendant
controversy) and the March drop of To Pimp a Butterfly. He told New York
City’s Hot 97 radio station in April: “I forgive them. Obviously, they don’t
understand where I come from. They don’t understand what I’ve been
through. They don’t understand what I’ve done to my community that tore
it down. For them to take my words out of context—yeah, I forgive them.”
Kendrick’s absolution was certainly the most Christian thing to do.

3.
Before turning the finger back on himself (and, by extension, the black
community) through his Billboard interview and “The Blacker the Berry,”

his first major gaffe in respect to his personal politics involved dismissing
the voting process back in August 2012. Promoting good kid, m.A.A.d city
in dialogue with the conspiracy news site Truth Is Scary, Kendrick
remarked:

I don’t vote, I don’t do no voting. I will keep it straight up
real with you. I don’t believe in none of the shit that’s going

on in the world. You talk with me, you talk with me for hours
because everything has a contradiction, everything is higher
ranking and way beyond us, way beyond people. So basically,
do what you do, do good with your people and live your life,
because what’s going on isn’t really in our hands. If it’s not

in the president’s hands, then it’s definitely not in our hands.
When I say the president can’t even control the world, then

you definitely know there’s something else out there pushing
the buttons. They could do whatever they want to do, we all

puppets. Just play your cards right.

Playing devil’s advocate, it’s not terribly difficult to imagine why a
young black man from Compton might not believe in the electoral process
enough to exercise his fifteenth amendment right to vote. The U.S. Census
Bureau says African-American voter turnout declined in the 2016
presidential election, from 66.6 percent in 2008 (when then President
Barack Obama ran for reelection) to 59.6 percent when Hillary Clinton
campaigned against Donald Trump. The Electoral College conundrum that
favored Trump over Clinton, in spite of her winning almost three million
more popular votes, underscored the drawbacks of representative
democracy for millions of disappointed voters who actually made it to the
polls. Like all politicians, Obama’s to-do list of campaign promises went
only partially fulfilled by the end of his eight years in office. The prison at
Guantánamo Bay remains open. War in Afghanistan still continues. This
may be frustrating for someone not fully versed in the checks and balances
of government, or even for someone who is. But believing that everything
is “not in the president’s hands” is hardly an uneducated, misinformed, or

conspiracy-theorist point of view. Deciding to rock the vote, to vote or die,
even though the end result won’t move the needle of progress as far as you
want (if at all) is ultimately a deeply personal decision. Nearly half the
eligible voters in the United States (46.9 percent) stayed home on Election
Day 2016. When Kendrick Lamar said that he is the community, as the
meme goes: he said what he said. No small amount of folks from his
community feel like “what’s going on isn’t really in our hands,” with
justifiable reasons to feel that way. Disillusionment or nonbelief in our
government hardly ranks as radical; Kendrick represents plenty of people
in that regard.

Days after his Truth Is Scary interview, Kendrick backtracked on
Twitter. (“And when you do VOTE. Just make sure it’s 4 the right reasons.
This way you won’t point the finger at that black man like y’all did.
Again.”) When November 2012 rolled around, he told MTV, “I think I’m
going to go ahead [and vote for Barack Obama], just because I cannot see
Mitt Romney [winning].” He laughed. “I’ll be on food stamps my whole
life! I just don’t feel like he’s got a good heart at all.”2

Bob Dylan—nonpareil poet, Nobel Prize winner, universally
recognized voice of the 1960s counterculture—emerged from the
American folk music tradition. One could say Kendrick Lamar put a
foundational brick into a new twenty-first-century subgenre of African-
American music; I like to call it woke music. Social protest in rhythm and
blues originates with Marvin Gaye and What’s Going On, an album so out
of left field for its time that Motown founder Berry Gordy felt skittish
releasing it into the world of 1971. Never had a concept album touched on
topics like war, poverty, racial injustice, even ecology, in the same soulful
tones used in the R&B tradition. Gaye’s masterpiece made possible all
future full-length albums thematically looking through a political lens,
from Bob Marley’s Exodus to dead prez’s Let’s Get Free.

Black Lives Matter originated from the unrest in Ferguson following
the death of Michael Brown and gave an activist voice to the racial
profiling, cultural inequality, and police brutality of today. But just as the
Black Arts Movement of the 1960s grew out of what poet Amiri Baraka,
the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and others called Black Power, Black
Lives Matter …